SIMS Alternatives

[Reboot_IT]

Hello,

 

I'm from a small MAT working with Primary and secondary schools. I'm looking into the prospect of making the change from SIMS to a cloud hosted MIS and would like any suggestions on systems and any experiences worth noting (good and bad!).

 

Thanks

[TechMonkey]

iSAMS is completely online, no admin application or anything like that. It can be hosted, or on prem.

 

Our staff like it, I have niggles, but no one hates it like I have known staff to do with other systems.

[themightymrp]

Not a MAT but we are using Bromcom and are now into our second year with them. We made the switch from Facility CMIS in order to go cloud based, plus there is a possibility on the horizon of forming a MAT with another school (Bromcom is good at this having the Harris Federation as one of their bigger customers).

 

I won't lie and say its been smooth sailing, but half of our issues have been because SLT doesn't just like to run before it can walk - it wants to do a marathon!! Another local school is using Bromcom in a much more out-of-the-box scenario and seem to be coping admirably. We just had to get all the bells and whistles running in the first year.

 

Overall staff have found it very good and has changed a lot of methods used within the school due to the added capabilities we now have. The My Child at School portal for parents is heavily used and seems pretty good (except for the app but thats a different story). We haven't yet ventured into the homework module but that is on our development plan for this year.

 

Also positive feedback from our admin person who run the school census's. She says fixing errors is far easier than our old CMIS system.

 

Overall, a good cloud based system - and they do run updates fairly frequently to fix issues, and I don't have to do them

[Reboot_IT]

Thank you, these are the main two that I had in mind so it's good to know they're being used without too much admin stress!

[LeMarchand]

I have a Junior using Arbor. The only thing I've had to do is turn the SIMS VM back on a couple of times. No-one has yet lamented the loss of SIMS, and I can't see that happening - but it was only set up last term, so not yet a full year.

[djm968]

Hosted SIMS?

 

https://sts.sims.co.uk/

Edited October 10, 2018 by djm968

[matt40k]

Hosted SIMS?

 

https://sts.sims.co.uk/

Go stand in the corner.

[headoned]

Has anyone tried pupil asset?

[JATSO]

Scholarpack

[matt40k]

Scholarpack

Local MAT uses ScholarPack which works well. It's only for Primary schools however, not that it really matters. ScholarPack have also partnership with Assembly - https://blog.assembly.education/scholarpack-assembly/

[coconurtaler]

No one has suggested Progresso yet.

[djm968]

- - - Updated - - -

 

Go stand in the corner.

 

I was going to say I will get my coat, but I think it is a viable alternative. It is cloud based and there wouldn't be any the training requirements for admin staff on a new MIS. Schools in my small SEN MAT have been migrated to hosted SIMS and overall the response has been positive.

[themightymrp]

No one has suggested Progresso yet.

 

GET OUT!!!

[matt40k]

I was going to say I will get my coat, but I think it is a viable alternative. It is cloud based and there wouldn't be any the training requirements for admin staff on a new MIS. Schools in my small SEN MAT have been migrated to hosted SIMS and overall the response has been positive.

There will always be training requirements, it's IT, things change. If they don't, you'll get left behind. Take the save button, it's icon is a floppy. Children these days will prob never actually use a floppy so they have no idea why the save button looks the way it does, take that one step forward, who saves? Surely it auto-saves. Google Docs anyone? Heck Google anything!

 

SIMS hosted isn't cloud. It's just managed SIMS hosted on someone else tin, it's also known as managed service or outsourcing. SIMS v8 is a complete rewrite to become a cloud MIS

[djm968]

Take the save button, it's icon is a floppy. Children these days will prob never actually use a floppy so they have no idea why the save button looks the way it does.

Children shouldn't have access to SIMS! and throwing a completely different MIS at staff would be much more challenging.

 

SIMS hosted isn't cloud. It's just managed SIMS hosted on someone else tin, it's also known as managed service or outsourcing.

Everything in the cloud is sitting on someone else's tin, not quite sure what your point is here. If you are using hosted SIMS then you don't need your own SIMS Server on-site!

[matt40k]

@djm968 I think you are missing the point. You know those children that don't have access to SIMS, they are the next generation, they will become staff and they won't know why a save button icon is a floppy or what a floppy is. You're staff won't work forever, new staff will come in and they won't know SIMS. Training needs to happen regardless what MIS you pick.

 

Hosted and Cloud aren't the same thing. To staff, hosted and self-hosted should make no difference (in theory), other then self-hosted \ on-prem you can walk into a room and see some noisy box with lots of blinking lights. Hosted you COULD walk into server room somewhere a point at a box go, that's where my stuff is running, cloud, you really have no idea. Even if you go into all of their data centers, you could use any number of servers over the course of a normal day. You might use one, you might use thousands. Serverless architecture, one of the key benefits of the cloud means every execute you run, runs on a new "server" and has a live time of a few milliseconds before it is destroyed. Ultimately for the end-user, what does it mean? It means no more stupid outages for upgrades\patches\maintenance, no more sorry it's running slow. It should get more or get bigger automatically. If you're school has on-prem and you're happy with stuff, great your IT team are doing amazing. If they are struggling, well you've got options.

 

I won't even get into the whole school staff struggle to learn something new, other then suggesting we might know some good educators that could help learn

[noelmm]

We moved from Cmis to Bromcom around 4 years ago now and we haven't looked back. Yes there have been problems but that's mostly to do with how we initially set our system up and not being sure what data to take over. All the way through the process Bromcom were just on the end of the phone and still are (we go direct to Bromcom for our support). Bromcom have also listened when we raised valid points on the way they used to deliver training on the core modules of the product via webinar, now they have moved towards onsite training where possible for the key modules.

[djm968]

I'm not getting into a debate about cloud/hosted, next generation of MIS users etc. etc. The OP was looking for cloud alternatives to SIMS which they are most likely running on servers that need constant maintenance and attention. I was suggesting that hosted SIMS is a viable option, it removes the requirement for on-site servers and if staff are already familiar with the SIMS applications there are virtually no additional training requirements for those staff.

[Reboot_IT]

As well as moving away from hosting our own MIS, another benefit to moving away from SIMS include taking away the limitation of a local installed MIS for Windows only OS. I don't know enough about hosted SIMS and whether that changes the current lack of compatibility. I'm also expecting a decent amount of ££ saving should we move from SIMS!

[djrscally]

x Progresso

 

It's an entirely viable SIMS alternative, and you should definitely at least look at it when you get Demos. Reports are super powerful (as long as you have someone who knows what they're doing) and you can stick em on dashboards to build pretty much anything you want. Assessments and behaviour and so on are all really configurable, so again you can set up whatever you want to suit you. It might not save you much money though and it does have some lingering frustrations (speed, clunkiness). But then again, what MIS doesn't.

Edited October 11, 2018 by djrscally

[djm968]

As well as moving away from hosting our own MIS, another benefit to moving away from SIMS include taking away the limitation of a local installed MIS for Windows only OS. I don't know enough about hosted SIMS and whether that changes the current lack of compatibility. I'm also expecting a decent amount of ££ saving should we move from SIMS!

 

Hosted SIMS removes the limitations of a locally installed MIS. Further info here. https://www.capita-sims.co.uk/products-and-services/hosted-sims.

 

I'm not trying to sell hosted SIMS to you, I'm not particularly that fond of Capita and their products and any opportunity to save a few quid is a good opportunity but when I did the research within my MAT, it became evident that a change of MIS would have a huge impact on the user base and staff training for the new MIS would have been a significant additional cost.

[mullet_man]

I know internet connections are a lot more reliable nowadays but what happens if your internet goes down, or the company hosting have issues?

 

Is it just a risk you take? nothing can be 100% risk free.

[djrscally]

I know internet connections are a lot more reliable nowadays but what happens if your internet goes down, or the company hosting have issues?

 

Is it just a risk you take? nothing can be 100% risk free.

 

Yeah basically. It happens far less often than your network crapping out because of whatever. If you're really paranoid you can get backup connections.

[djm968]

Any cloud/hosted service carries that risk but you have processes in place that enable you to manage the risk. Edited October 11, 2018 by djm968

[RuthLelliott]

We were forced to move from Sims to Pupil Asset without any consultation - it's still proving to be the most frustrating system and that's 2 years on. I won't go in to all the details on here, but I know there are much better systems out there...